On the Lifecycle of a Lightning Network Payment Channel

The Bitcoin Lightning Network, launched in 2018, serves as a layer 2 scaling solution for Bitcoin. The Lightning Network allows users to establish channels between each other and subsequently exchange off-chain payments. Together, these channels form a network that facilitates payments between parties even if they do not have a channel in common. The Lightning Network has gained popularity over the past five years as it offers an attractive alternative to on-chain transactions by substantially reducing transaction costs and processing times. Nevertheless, due to the privacy-centric design of the Lightning Network, little is understood about its inner workings. In this work, we conduct a measurement study of the Lightning Network to shed light on the lifecycle of channels. By combining Lightning gossip messages with on-chain Bitcoin data, we investigate the lifecycle of a channel from its opening through its lifetime to its closing. In particular, our analysis offers unique insights into the utilization patterns of the Lightning Network. Even more so, through decoding the channel closing transactions, we obtain the first dataset of Lightning Network payments, observe the imbalance of channels during the closing, and investigate whether both parties are involved in the closing, or one closes the channel unilaterally. For instance, we find nearly 60% of cooperatively closed channels are resurrected, i.e., their outputs were used to fund another channel.